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by Elizabeth Harper 
Apr 8th 2007 at 4:13PM
Yesterday we talked about the death mechanic in World of Warcraft and how gameplay might be changed by making death mean more to your character. Today, as a point of comparison, we're going to take a look at death in the MMO Vanguard -- and how it's about to be changed.
Currently, death in Vanguard involves loss of experience (15%, and if you have no experience, you could go into debt -- i.e. you would need to gain 15% of the experience towards your next level before you could actually gain any experience again) and your body (tombstone) would remain where you died -- along with all of your soulbound items. Options upon death were to (1) be resurrected by another player, which causes minor experience loss and minor item damage, (2) to recover your body from where you died, which causes minor experience loss and minor item damage, or (3) summon your body, which causes the 15% experience loss and major durability damage. Though it sounds quite a bit harsher, this isn't that different from World of Warcraft's current system of "run back to your body and all is well" -- it has just added experience loss to the equation.
However, on their test server, the death system is changing. First off, you no longer leave a corpse behind when you die -- you leave an "essence." No items are left on the essence, so retrieval is less important. However, if you retrieve your essence, you regain a large portion of your lost experience. And to top it all off, experience loss has been decreased. So while casual-friendly World of Warcraft players wonder if the death penalty isn't harsh enough, hardcore Vanguard reduces its death penalty to one not terribly harsher than World of Warcraft's.
Forum poster prencher makes the obvious connection, "...we're back to 'wowified' raiding, where you just keep chain wiping until you get it right."
Note to Vanguard players in the audience: I do not presently play Vanguard, so my information has come from IGN's Vanguard Vault and VanguardSphere's forums. I've done my best to understand how the death mechanic works in Vangaurd, but as I have no first-hand experience, I could be wrong -- so if you see any inaccuracies, I welcome corrections.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
Todd Apr 9th 2007 9:51AM
I'm with Brian. De-leveling is a seriously harsh penalty for a game that you pay monthly to play and should be fun. There's nothing fun about being penalized just because you died, even if that death was due to the stupidity of someone else.
In WoW if a raid wipes, and then subsequently people were to De-level, then where's the fun from that? Imagine de-leveling and that sword you wield, which requires x level, becomes pointless because you just de-leveled below the requirements. That's some good wholesome shit right there.
hehe Apr 9th 2007 10:00AM
I originally got into MMOs with City of Heroes, it was fun to play with friends until post level 10 when negative experience debt occurred if you died. If you died too many times you eventually got so far into debt that it was just an issue of playing to get out of debt and not fun. That pretty much killed it for me.
I don't want to get into a hardcore vs carebear argument here (I don't know what you want to classify me as, I raid 5 days a week for 4-5 hours a night), but if there was a negative experience earned on death, I'd quit the game.
Any future MMOs that want to do as well as WoW is doing now need to get rid of the penalty when you die mentality and strongly look at copying WoW's concept... it works! It's designed to allow more casual play style and thus attract more players, I'm certain casual and hardcore people can appreciate it.
Those whining about it being too carebear or something, hey, plenty of other niche games out there for you to play too...
Chase Apr 9th 2007 10:25AM
If they change to the mechanics to make it easy to lose experience every time you die...I'm done. This is just another way to make it more difficult of regular gamers, but even MORE difficult for casual gamers to get to any end-game stuff.
Dracula Jones Apr 9th 2007 1:23PM
Yeah, it was real fun in Everquest to die to a train in a dungeon zone and then die twice more trying to make it back to your corpse naked, deleveling in the process. Oh and then you had to actually loot all of your gear piece by piece from your own corpse, which was tons of fun. Who remembers wiping in the basement in Unrest or the castle in Mistmoore?
Keystone Apr 11th 2007 2:42PM
XP loss is horrible, but item / money loss is not a bad idea. I would like to see gold as a bankable item, and a % is loss upon death.
I can handle loosing items & money, but do NOT take my XP away from me...